


Way Out

by tuesday



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Background Character Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Eventual Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 05:20:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20304094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesday/pseuds/tuesday
Summary: It starts with Tony falling through a portal in the sky.





	Way Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Penknife](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penknife/gifts).

> PenKnife, this is very much a retread in most ways and is meant to be the set up for getting to eventual Tony/Dorian. I plan to come back for a later "zero other context for how we get here" chapter that's just that. For now, have the beginning of Tony falling into Thedas. I don't know why I thought when I started this treat that I could cover enough ground to get where I wanted to go in the time WDLF allowed while also finishing my five assignments. :'D

It starts with Tony falling through a portal in the sky. He lands somewhere crawling with Chitauri. Somehow, the other Avengers got there first. They're lying dead or dying on the ground around him. Cap's telling him it's his fault as the Chitauri swarm and Leviathans drift overhead.

"Kind of a bad time for hallucinations," Tony says, especially because no matter how many Chitauri he blasts, more take their place.

"You can't fight them all," says a voice behind him, and Tony barely pulls the repulsor in time to avoid hitting a little old lady in the face. She reaches out a hand. "Quickly, while there's still a way out."

On the one hand, it seems like a bad idea to listen to the maybe a hallucination. On the other, there's no end to the Chitauri, and that is a portal behind her. Tony mentally shrugs and hits the rockets on his boots. As he reaches it, a vast hand reaches out and touches a single clawed fingertip to his chest. He freezes up inside the armor. The armor stops moving. It peels back. Something crawls inside his head.

"Oh, you do know fear," it says. "Your whole life is a nightmare, is it not?"

"This one is not yours," the little old lady says. She also puts her hand on his chest. She pushes.

Tony falls toward the portal. He's in the armor, an older mark, the screen flickering. In the corner, it says, "Call lost." He watches nuclear fire bloom on Chitauri ships, but it's not enough, only a small fraction caught in the conflagration. He's falling. The portal's closing. He's _caught on the wrong side_. No one knows what's coming. He can't breathe.

Tony hits the portal. He's bare to the world except the flight suit and the casing on his chest. The sky's all wrong. He's falling, wind tearing at his skin. The portal's not closing. He has the sense he's caught on the wrong side twice over. He can't breathe. He's trying to call the armor, but there's something in his head, jagged laughter that accompanies the words, "I see you, Tony Stark."

He hits the ground like a thunderclap.

—

He wakes up in chains with a feeling like his skull's been split apart and precariously pieced back together. Honestly, it's not his worst kidnapping. At least his chest's in one piece. Whoever they are, they learned their lesson from the last guys, because there's nothing technological in sight, a dirt floor, stone walls, and metal bars, along with a sturdy-looking wooden door. There are no other prisoners, just Tony in rough spun robes that feel like burlap. There's something wrong with his hand. He'd think he'd landed on it, but it's glowing Time Stone green and crackling with what Tony hopes isn't magic.

It is almost definitely magic.

As Tony watches, it seems to split and grow, like there's something trying to crawl out. He screams. The pain recedes after a moment. When he can open his eyes, he can see he's called down the guards. They're dressed like Renn Faire rejects. There are six of them, four carbon copy mooks, one in fancy armor, and one in nicer robes than Tony's sporting.

"What is this, cosplay Friday?" Tony asks.

The one with short, dark hair stalks forward. "Tell me why we shouldn't kill you now." Promising start. "The conclave is destroyed. Everyone who attended is dead ... except for you."

Tony's head hurts. He can't think straight. He says, "Manchurian Candidate didn't blow up that many people." That doesn't seem right. Why doesn't that seem right?

"Everyone," the chatty guard repeats in a low, furious voice. Tony's getting the sense she's not actually a guard. She grabs him by the arm of the injured hand. "What is this?"

"Took the words right out my mouth," Tony says. She shakes him casually, a display of strength that wouldn't be out of place on a super soldier.

"Are you trying to claim you don't what that is? That it's not a sign of your culpability? Your guilt?" she asks.

"Why don't you enlighten me?" Tony bites out. "Because I'm the one who woke up in new clothes in a new place with a headache like a hangover and a gap in time like I got blackout drunk and got this shiny new lightshow in my hand instead of an ill-advised tattoo. I'm thinking you know more than I do right now."

"You're lying." Tony wonders if she's going to strike him.

"We need him, Cassandra," the other woman says in what's probably a good cop-bad cop play.

They decide they're going to take him to "the rift," which Tony hopes isn't code for a torture chamber. They take him up some stairs and out into a long hall or maybe some type of gathering chamber. There are doors and alcoves. They lead him to a set of large wooden double doors at the end that open up out into a quaint little village full of more would-be SCA members. Overhead the sky is mostly blue, just a normal Earth sky—except the fuck-off huge green portal in the middle of it. The energy swirling around it matches what's in Tony's hand.

"We call it the Breach. It's a passing rift into the world of demons that grows larger with each passing hour." Did she just say demons? Did Tony drop down in the middle of somewhere with a religious cult who decided to kidnap him? "It's not the only such rift. Just the largest. All were caused by the explosion at the Conclave."

"What do you mean by demons?" Tony looked down at his glowing hand. "And are you saying that I have one of these rifts _inside my hand_?"

Cassandra pauses. Her eyes widen the tiniest bit. Her lips press together slightly before she says, "No. Your mark is linked, but it isn't a rift."

"Before I believe that, I'd like—" There's a pulse from the hole in the sky and Tony's hand both. It takes him to his knees, a throbbing pain that shoots up his arm and travels through his whole body. He grits his teeth and tries to breathe through it.

Cassandra explains that each time the Breach expands, the mark spreads. It's killing him. Yeah, this feels familiar. She thinks the mark may be the key to stopping this, which makes sense if they're connected.

The one thing Tony wonders is, "Hole in the sky, some sort of weird aliens, weird, green energy, me knocked flat on my ass—where are the Avengers? This seems right up Bruce Banner's alley. Get me in a lab. We can probably reverse engineer this or at least slow it down."

"The what?" Cassandra asks. "Who?"

"Lady," Tony says slowly, "where, exactly, did I land?"

"You're in Haven," Cassandra says like it's obvious. When Tony shows no familiarity, she continues, with the sense of prompting someone on a well known fact, "At the town outside the Temple of Sacred Ashes."

"Right." So Tony landed on some kind of alien planet. Great. "Let's go check out this rift. It's a portal. Portals are like doors. They're meant to be closed."

And maybe Tony would see some way to get back up there before closing it behind him. He'd rather not wait on Captain Marvel coming to rescue him again.

—

On the way to the portal, they're attacked. By demons. What the fuck?

"I cannot protect you," Cassandra admits once the demons are all dead, though she did a pretty good job. Tony had to run away some, too, admittedly.

"Where's my armor? Without it, I'm kind of at a loss for protecting myself," Tony says.

"You were wearing only underclothes when we found you," Cassandra says. She shakes her head. "No armor. But there are weapons there should you need one."

Swords, spears, a bow. Some kind of staff. Tony has no idea how to use any of them. This is a job for Hawkeye. Tony grabs a staff, because at least he can't stab himself with it.

"I should have known you were a mage," Cassandra says.

Tony thinks, _A what now?_ He keeps quiet. He has no idea what's going on. The splitting headache hasn't gotten any better, throbbing in counterpoint with his hand.

—

"Cast something," Cassandra cries when they're in the thick of another battle and Tony is using the length of the staff to keep the demons back. "Anything."

"It's not like I know the incantation for magic missile," Tony snapped. "If you wanted a wizard, you should have kidnapped the Sorcerer Supreme."

"You're not a mage," Cassandra says when it's over.

"I'm a scientist," Tony agrees. "All I know about magic is that it's weird, hard to quantify, and causes far too much trouble." 

"You're a civilian." She looks horrified; she looks resigned.

"I'm an Avenger," Tony corrects.

"A mercenary?"

"Definitely not that." Tony shakes out his hand, which feels like it's going to tear itself apart. "Let's focus on closing that portal."

—

They meet up with with a few people who are more obviously aliens, though still as strangely humanoid as most of the aliens Tony's met so far. One of them walks Tony through closing the smaller portals the more alien aliens (demons) are pouring through. They make it to the forward camp, where the aliens who look most human proceed to fight over how to reach the portal.

"Whatever you're deciding, you should decide soon, because that portal's only getting bigger," Tony says.

"Which would you choose?" Cassandra wants to know.

If Tony had his armor, he'd just fly there. Right now, he's dead weight. "Whichever best accounts for the fact that I'm going to be zero help."

They try to sneak through the mountain path. There's still fighting. At least they save some scouts.

—

Tony nearly trips over a burnt corpse. He hates this world.

—

When they open the portal so they can close it properly, an enormous demon comes barreling out. It has electricity whips that remind Tony of Vanko. He's pretty sure he's going to die.

One of them catches him across the chest, but is stopped by some kind of energy shield. Bald Elrond says, "Pay attention."

Thanks, Bald Elrond. Tony's trying.

They fight the demon back. They close the portal. Tony passes out, still on the wrong side.

—

Tony wakes up hoping he's going to get to say he had the weirdest dream. A small, poorly heated, ramshackle house greets him. He's lying on an uncomfortable mattress covered in furs. A pointy-eared alien walks in the room.

"Well, fuck," Tony says.


End file.
